After having a look in the shops for almond flour with my housemate and drastically failing, I sent Diana a message through her facebook page and asked if buckwheat flour would be an acceptable alternative. Diana replied saying that you can make almond flour at home in a food processor, just chuck 'em in and grind 'em up!
Luckily, I happened to have some raw almonds that I bought at a farmers market and never got around to using and so my excitement began...
First a little bit about almond nutrition. Almonds are what is referred to as 'nutritionally dense' meaning that they pack a whole heap of good stuff in a small serving. They're a great source of fiber as well as a variety of vitamins and mineral including manganese, magnesium, iron, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, vitamin A, E, K and B1-3, 5, 6 and 9 as well as many others. Not only that, they're a great source of healthy fats and an excellent addition to low carb, gluten free diets. Almonds can be eaten whole, included in recipes as a flour (what I made), made into a nutritious milk or into almond butter and used as an alternative to peanut butter for those with peanut allergies.
Making your own almond flour is a much cheaper alternative to buying it and you can ensure that there's no extra preservatives or hidden nasties that you might find in store bought. And it really is as easy as Diana said it would be!
Most recipes call for blanched almond flour, made from almonds with no skins, but I decided to keep my skins on because I was too excited to take the time to soak and take the skins off. There's also quite a lot of fibre and antioxidants in the skins and a little fibre never hurt anyone ;)
After doing a bit of googling and youtubing for any tips and tricks I decided I was ready to give it a shot!
All you need is almonds, can be raw or roasted but preferably organic to avoid any nasty chemicals, a food processor, a stainless steel sieve, a bowl and an airtight container for storage.
I used two cups of raw almonds. Throw them in the food processor, stopping every now and again to make sure it's not turning into butter and just checking the general consistency.
Run the ground almonds through the sieve to get out any chunks and achieve a consistent texture, run the bigger pieces through again!
Once everything has been ground down it's ready to use. Put any leftovers into an airtight container and store in the fridge or freezer as exposure to air and sunlight will cause it to rancid pretty quickly if left in a cupboard. I made around a cup and a half of flour (left) from two cups of whole nuts. I could have made more but by the end I had lots of little nut pieces a bit more to the consistency of meal (on the right) which were taking a long time to put through the processor and I decided to keep them separate to add to yoghurt or chia porridges etc. Seemed like a great topper to add so I kept them :)
So there you have it! Super easy to make at home as a healthier, grain free, gluten free alternative to heavily processed wheat flour. My batch turned out better than I was expecting. Still coarser than shop flour but contains only one ingredient and no preservatives. Overall I'm very happy with how this turned out! Shortly after I used them to make the brownie recipe I mentioned at the beginning of this entry and if you look out tomorrow you can see how they turned out ;)
You can usually find almond meal in the health food and/or baking and/or nuts/etc section :) (You can probably find it pretty easily at most health food stores, too, but health food stores in Australia are both shite and excessively overpriced.)
ReplyDeleteThere's almond meal at coles for some ridiculous amount but for how much nuts cost and how easy it is to make I'm just going to make it myself :) Also means that I can make it in the quantities that I need when I need it!
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